February 4, 2021
There’s a big push right now among corporate media, Democrats, and NeverTrumpers to establish a narrative that the Republican Party is being torn apart in a bitter civil war between its establishment wing and its supposed QAnon wing. It’s about as true as your garden-variety QAnon conspiracy theory, but it’s politically useful, which is why you’re seeing it crop up all over the media right now.
According to this narrative, dangerous right-wing conspiracy theorists and QAnon acolytes make up a sizable portion of the GOP electorate and enjoy broad acceptance among many Republican elected officials and right-of-center media outlets. These people believe all the “lies” and “conspiracy theories” that Trump peddled after the November election so much so that they launched an “armed insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed attempt to overturn the election results and maybe even kidnap Vice President Mike Pence or murder Rep. Alexandria O
The Marjorie Taylor Greene committee removal vote, explained
Eleven House Republicans joined Democrats to take the conspiracy theory-promoting lawmaker off her committee assignments.
Share this story
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
House Republicans were forced to go on the record Thursday evening about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) when the lower chamber voted on partisan lines to remove her from her two committee assignments.
The vote comes after days of back-and-forth between party leaders, as Democrats have pushed for consequences for
the first-term representative, who has supported or suggested, in no particular order: the QAnon conspiracy theory; Parkland and 9/11 denial; the killing of Democratic leaders; and the idea that 2018 forest fires were started by a Jewish-controlled space laser.
“All the political world is talking about these days is Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Georgia Republican congresswoman’s series of extreme and intolerant comments and social media posts have forced House Republicans to consider whether she should be stripped of her committee assignments and prompted a debate over whether Greene’s decidedly Trump-y version of conservatism has a place in the GOP tent,” wrote Chris Cillizza, a CNN political columnist.
“It’s a massive story and one that affects the future of every single Republican elected official in the country,” he said.
Well, it is certainly a story which is subject to interpretation. A few stray headlines from the last 24 hours: